Vijay Shekhar Sharma to buy 10.3% stake in Paytm from Ant Financial

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of One97 Communications and its consumer brand Paytm, has entered an agreement to purchase a 10.3% stake in the company from Ant Financial through his fully-owned firm Resilient Asset Management B.V.

Antfin Holding B.V. will transfer 65,335,101 shares to an entity owned by Sharma – Resilient Asset Management B.V. (“Transaction”) - through an off-market transfer, according to the disclosure made with the National Stock Exchange.

According to the agreement, Sharma’s Resilient will acquire ownership and voting rights of a 10.3% block and issue OCDs (optionally convertible debentures) to Antfin (Ant Financial) worth $628 million as consideration for the above transaction.

“No cash payment will be made for this acquisition, and neither will any pledge, guarantee, or other value assurance be provided by Mr. Sharma, directly or otherwise,” the statement added.

Antfin was the largest stakeholder in Paytm (One97 Communications) with 23.8% of the stake, which will be reduced to 13.5% while Sharma will hold 19.2% of the shareholding in the company after the transaction.

This is yet another secondary transaction for the Noida-based company. Last month, Japanese investment company SoftBank sold an additional 2% stake in Paytm in the public market, generating $180-$200 million in proceeds. This marked down Softbank's stake to below 10% in the fintech company. Earlier this year, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba also offloaded its 6.26% stake from Paytm in two tranches.

To recall, Alibaba and Ant Financial also exited One97 Communcations’s e-commerce business Paytm Mall in May last year.

Paytm posted Rs 2,341 crore revenue during the first quarter of the fiscal year ending June 2023 (Q1 FY24) while the losses of the company surged 2X quarter-on-quarter to Rs 358.4 crore during the same period.